Our current climate change crisis calls for this type of bold, inspiring and transformative action. The book Drawdown, The Most Comprehensive Plan to Reverse Global Warming, put out by Project Drawdown, explains, maps, measures and models solutions that are already in place.

“Drawing down” occurs when we succeed in reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere on a year-to-year basis. This is not a daydream. We are currently achieving this on a small scale. If we scale up these efforts we can reverse global warming.

Eight of the top 25 actions to achieve this reversal involve food. Each one of us can rethink the food we are producing, eating and wasting. And we can call for more government and industry action to support sustainable food systems.

Nothing more fully and powerfully influences the daily lives of everyone than our food.Alexandr Podvalny/Unsplash

The World Peace Diet offers one way. This diet encourages mindful eating. Advocates say that many animal-based eaters become so largely because of cultural, social and familial pressures. They argue that it is not necessary to carry on these unexamined and outmoded traditions.

Food impacts everything

Eating is personal, public and political and impacts all aspects of human life. Nothing more fully and powerfully influences the daily lives of everyone than our food, food choices and food systems. Food is a tool to nourish life but also for taking political action and for averting the dangers of climate change and preventing unnecessary harm.

Left to right, Brad Wall, former premier for Saskatchewan, his wife Tami, film director James Cameron and his with Suzy speak with local farmer Albert Vandebery prior to their funding announcement for a new pulse food processing facility in Vanscoy, Sask., last September.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Liam Richards

By reducing animal agriculture, we also could improve health, stabilize grain prices, enhance food security and prevent unnecessary harm and violence. Will Tuttle, author of The World Peace Diet says:

“Food is a source and metaphor of life, love, generosity, celebration, pleasure, reassurance, acquisition and consumption. While concurrently, it can be a metaphor of control, domination, cruelty, and death. Eating can be a purposeful, intimate act, a regime of self-care and love, and a powerful political message.” In the wise words of the Lorax by Dr. Seuss, “Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”

We can choose a non-violent lifestyle. We could choose not to take a life to eat. We could eat an array of nuts, seeds, legumes, fruits and vegetables to meet our nutritional requirements without giving up on taste or satisfaction.

Choosing peas can help to build the place of love and mutual assistance and understanding that John Perry Barlow envisioned. Food could be our greatest vehicle for more peaceful, mindful and sustainable living.

It’s barbecue season, a time of year that usually makes the meat industry happy. But an increasing number of Canadians, especially those under 35, are cutting out meat from their diets – a trend that should be causing serious alarm for meat producers.
(Shutterstock)

Younger Canadians are going meatless, but Canada still has a love affair with meat, according to a Dalhousie University study. This 2015 photo shows rib eye steak with gochujang butter and nori.
(AP Photo/Matthew Mead)